morrie23 wrote...
In all seriousness, I can buy the Reapers (or at least some of them) starting their journey towards the galaxy back during the Rachni Wars if that does represent the point when the Keeper Signal failed and Sovereign had to resort to other means that culminated in Saren and the Geth. But, I don't remember mention of when the Keeper signal failed in game, so this is really all just speculation and conjecture to help prevent the plot flying apart in my mind.
Still, the activities of the Collectors now seem a waste of time if the Reapers were really so close to the galaxy. If it was presented in game that the Collector activites were destablising tha galaxy from a political point of view then I'd be more accepting, but again this is not the presented in game from what I remember.
Dude, listen. It takes 22 years of CONSTANT (no disembarking, no refueling, no R&R) conventional FTL to cross from one side of the galaxy to the other. The galaxy is 100,000 light years across. It takes 2.3 years to cross 10,000 lightyears by conventional FTL. 10,000 light years is really really far.
It is no bloody stretch to imagine this is the distance that the Reapers are sitting at outside the galaxy. Even if it's marginal per cosmic standards, it's still 94,607,304,725,808 km. "Oh but at this distance explorers might find them," your probably think.
There is ZERO incentive to explore that part of the galaxy. It's dark and filled with cold rocks and drifting stars. As if that wasn't enough, the existing stellar objects that FTL ships must discharge their drive cores unto are too far apart since that's where everything starts to disperse. If i remember it correctly, ships require discharges every 50 hours or so (25 lightyears before needing to stop). By the time the ships are halfway to a new stellar object that far out, everyone inside are fried by the electricity build-up. To put this in perspective, the star closest to our own is 4.24 light years apart, and we're in the thickest part of the galaxy.
The Reapers can obviously circumvent this problem, be it through a technical solution beyond our scope of understanding or them simply being able to amass significantly larger build ups before needing to discharge.
Before i begin math-zerging, i must explain the details of FTL as I've come to understand it. A regular, fast FTL drive in the ME universe exceeds the speed of light by roughly 4300 times. I use the number 4380 times lightspeed myself, as I've read it somewhere.
That means a common FTL drive can cover a lightyear in 2 hours. 12 light years a day (or roughly 4 parsecs). And in case it wasn't obvious due to the multiplicative FTL speed, 4380 light years per year. This is with constant motion, without disembarking or docking. Keep that in mind.
Either way, the relatively close distance of 10,000 light years is sufficient to keep the reapers hidden. It also prevents them from wasting ludicrous amounts of energy, such as the amount it would be required for them to travel 2000 years worth of distance at FTL speeds. Now, we have already established that a ship with a decently fast drive can travel 4380 light years of constant motion a year. Multiply that by 2000, and you got 8,760,000 light years.
To put that into perspective, the rough distance between the Milky Way and Andromeda is 2 million light years. 2,000,000 light years. That means, according to your hypothesis of them going full speed straight away from the beginning of the rachni wars, that they are stationed at a distance outside the galaxy exceeding the distance to Andromeda by 4.3 times.
Does this sound wrong to you? In any way? No? Not even a little? Not even a bit? Not even a teensy bit? Hmm?
Leaving that behind, let's discuss the point of the collectors. Their entire point being, of course, to build a new Vanguard to replace Sovereign. No one said why. Everyone just assumed it meant the Reapers were sitting on their lazy tentacle-y asses out in dark space waiting for Godot.
Apply logic to this situation. The galaxy knows someone is out to get them. The stunt Sovereign pulled won't work twice, especially given that the galaxy will easily be able to recoup their losses in the time it takes to build a new Vanguard. Also, the fleet is now awake and wasting energy after expecting Sovereign's signal to go through and the Relay connection activating.
Here's the deal. The Vanguard was never supposed to do anything right away. It wasn't the plan B - it was the Plan B.2. The Alpha Relay was Plan B, and the Reapers were well aware that they would have to fight a conventional war once the Citadel plan failed. I'm sure it's not the first time.
Back to the Vanguard. Why build it? It's useless, right?
Believe it or not, but spies play a crucial part to every war. It would have been immensely useful in the ensuing conflict with the galactic civilizations. When the reaper fleet engages the civs, the resulting chaos allows the Vanguard to slip through the Omega Relay and use subversion tactics to either turn the Terminus Systems against Citadel space, or gather new proxies and agents to infiltrate the Citadel while the main bulk of the Citadel force is busy fighting the reapers. There are other unaccounted possibilites, of course. Draw the lines. Think outside the box. The possibilities are endless if you just use your brain to figure them out.
But of course, it's easier to complain than doing the math.
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